· details
Get your headphones on and listen to this master of mood make his way across the undulating sands, the wet guitar reverb, warbling organs, crystal-clear claves, and snaking melodies sounding like surf music for a desert holiday.
Billy Martin’s drumming makes me think of oxymorons like “precisely sloppy” and “intensely casual” and “red hot chill out”. This album lives within a zone that’s hazily bounded by funk, jazz, and electronic dance music.
The surprising part is not that this Quebec outfit mixing country music, folk, surf, and a dash of Elvis exists, but that they have been doing this for three decades plus and yours truly is just finding out.
On Halloween I fell asleep to this horror-punk platter playing, and dreamt of whirling in a mosh pit in a toxic swamp, catching elbows and knees from zombie alligators and bouncing off leaking radioactive waste barrels. I woke up covered in bruises.
Like the whoomp from pouring too much firestarter on and throwing the match in, this band is in your face, exciting and a bit scary at the same time, with its snarling guitars, sneering vocals, and the heft of every possible item in the garage.
lacking.org